It was an accident, but I got a glimpse of the last six years of my life.

I was stuck at home in bed with a nasty flu. On Monday, I couldn’t raise my head off the pillow, so entertainment wasn’t really an issue. But, on Tuesday, in between naps and blowing my nose ‘til it was raw, I felt well enough to do something, anything to keep from going insane.

Probably not the best choice, but I picked something difficult — something I’d been dreading and procrastinating over for months — I switched over all of the files in my old computer to a new one. I am so ashamed to admit this, but I actually got the new computer at end of Octobers as a 60th birthday present from my husband, Dan. It sat in the box on the hope chest next to my bed for months because I simply could not find the time to pull it out of the carton and get going.

In my defense, Dan and I are more than a little overextended. We have seven children (five still living at home), four dogs and sometimes five (depending on whether we are dog-sitting my oldest daughter Emily’s somewhat incontinent dachshund), a very needy 20-pound orange cat who occasionally brings dead rodents into the house and demanding full-time jobs.

Adding to our bewilderment is the upcoming marriage of Ellie, our second daughter, who will be marching down the aisles next Saturday, March 2. So, I get behind on things I should be doing. I procrastinate. And sometimes I just collapse at night because my life is pretty crazy. At least being home sick with the flu might have a silver lining. I could get the file transfer done, scrub the hard drive clean and give my old computer to Dan, who had been waiting so patiently for three and a half months.

Moving files and cleansing a computer is a dreadfully boring job, (insert flash drive, select files, copy files, dump files) but when you are stuck in bed, it sure beats daytime television where the only thing you will see is Maury Povich or a similar drama king revealing the results of paternity tests and then airing the screams and recriminations. So, I began the dull and repetitive task that I thought would take about an hour.

Turns out it took much longer. I came across so many pictures and emails from the last six years that I had to stop and look. It was like going into the attic to find something like an old turkey roaster or an ancient piece of linoleum. But, before you find what you are looking for, you get distracted by all the pictures and memories hidden away in boxes. Suddenly, an hour goes by and you’re camped out looking at old photographs and school projects your kids did in the third grade.

This was the electronic version of a trip to the attic. People simply don’t print pictures like they used to. So instead of being relegated to those boxes in the attic, they sit in “albums” on your Facebook account or they are stuffed into folders on your laptop, cell phone or tablet. If I want to show people pictures of my children these days, I don’t open my wallet, I open my Smartphone.

So, what did I see on my virtual tour of the “attic?” The usual stuff. I was shocked by how much the kids had grown. Jacob, who is now 17 and 6 feet, 2, looked like a little boy in so many of the pictures from those days when he first came to us at age 11. The same was true of Jarid, now 12. He was six at the time, but looked like a toddler. Jeff, 14, looks like a man these days, but in my “attic” snapshots, he is a chubby little 8-year-old with a baby face and freckles.

And there were remarkable photos of Jack, who came to us at 15½ years old. He is almost 22 now, but in many ways looks younger now than the pictures from 6 years ago. As a foster child at 15½, he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but looks lighter and more playful in recent snapshots.

The other telling hunk of information gathered from my “attic” tour was just how over the top our lives are. There were so many photos — birthdays, college graduations, high school graduations, weddings, trips to amusements parks, the beach and the lake. There were far too many pictures of our dogs and our kids playing with the dogs, and scores of snapshots of athletic events: hockey, baseball, basketball and lacrosse. I don’t think anyone will remember the scores, just that we were there taking pictures.

And, for all the times I have felt a deep sense of failure on this long and difficult journey of being an adoptive parent, I saw a lot of smiles in those photographs — big smiles. Perhaps I don’t always see it, but there is some evidence of a happy life. And that’s worth a trip to the “attic” any day.